Who First Reached the Arctic Tundra? The Question Has No Answer

There is no "first person" to "go to the Arctic Tundra." The premise misunderstands both geography and human history.

Why It's Unanswerable

• It's a biome, not a destination: The tundra spans ~11.5M km² across Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, Russia.
• Continuous habitation: Indigenous peoples (Inuit, Yupik, Sámi, Nenets, Chukchi, Evenki and many others) have lived across this region for thousands of years—since post-glacial recolonization (~12,000+ years ago in some areas).
• No "discovery" moment: Generations were born, lived, and died on the tundra long before any external explorer arrived.

First *Recorded* Outsiders

If you mean *non-indigenous* explorers: Norse settlers reached Greenland (~985 CE); Russian promyshlenniki pushed across Siberia (16th–17th c.); British naval expeditions (Franklin, Rae, etc.) mapped the Canadian Arctic (19th c.). But they entered a long-inhabited world.